Under a Charm. Vol. I

CHAPTER VIII

In Herr Witold's opinion, the diplomatic mission for which he had selected Dr. Fabian would be comparatively easy of performance; the chief difficulty lay in preparing the way for it. In order to gain accurate information as to 'what was really going on in C–,' the Doctor must, naturally, have access to the Princess Baratowska's house, and this could only be obtained through Waldemar. Witold racked his brains to think how he could put the matter before his adopted son, so as not to be met at the outset by a decided refusal. Chance unexpectedly befriended him. On Waldemar's last visit, the Princess had expressed a wish to make the acquaintance of her son's tutor. The young man spoke of it on his return, and the Squire caught eagerly at the welcome opportunity. For once in his life he was able to approve of a wish of the Princess Hedwiga's as rational. He held the Doctor inexorably to his word, and the latter, who had all along hoped that the scheme would fall through, frustrated by his pupil's obstinacy, was obliged, two days later, to set out for C– in Waldemar's company, in order to undergo the desired presentation.

Waldemar was in the saddle as usual. He was passionately fond of riding, and detested a drive along the sandy or stony roads, over which he could gallop so swiftly. It did not occur to him to take a seat in the carriage to-day out of courtesy to his tutor. Dr. Fabian was accustomed to such marks of disrespect, and, shy and yielding by nature, he had not the courage to make a firm stand against his pupil's cavalier treatment of him, or, on its account, to resign his post. He was without pecuniary resources of his own; a situation meant for him the means of earning a livelihood. The life at Altenhof suited him but ill; still, on the whole, he contrived to take little part in it. He only appeared at table, and again for an hour in the evening, to keep the Squire company. His pupil made but small claim on his time. Waldemar was always glad when the hours for study were over, and his master was still more so. All the rest of the day was at the latter's own disposal, and he could pursue his hobby, his old Germanic researches, undisturbed. To these beloved studies Herr Witold owed it that the present preceptor of his adopted son did not follow the example of his six predecessors, and decamp from the place; for the Doctor said to himself with justice that, in another situation where the boys under his charge would require constant supervision, it would be all over with his archaeology. It needed, indeed, a patient character like Fabian's to hold out under such trying circumstances. To-day again he gave proof of his forbearance, bearing Waldemar's desertion in silence, when that young gentleman, giving spurs to his horse, actually rode on before, and only pulled rein to wait for him at the entrance to C–, which they reached about noon.

On their arrival they found only Countess Wanda in the drawing-room, and Dr. Fabian went through the first ordeal of introduction with much embarrassment, it is true, but still with a tolerable presence. Unfortunately, his visible and somewhat comic uneasiness at once incited the young Countess to bring her talent for mischief to bear on him.

"So, Doctor, you are my Cousin Waldemar's tutor?" she began. "I offer you my sincere condolences, and pity you with all my heart."

Fabian looked up startled, and then glanced with alarm at his pupil, who, however, seemed not to have heard the remark–his face did not betray a trace of anger or indignation.

"Why so, Countess?" stammered the Doctor.

"I mean, it must be a difficult office to educate Herr Waldemar Nordeck," continued Wanda, quite undisturbed, and with intense enjoyment of the confusion her words produced.

Again Dr. Fabian glanced across at Waldemar with an expression of real anguish. He knew how sensitive the young man was, how ill he could brook a jest. Often enough had a far more inoffensive observation from Herr Witold called forth a perfect storm; but, curiously enough, there was no sign of one to-day. Waldemar was leaning quietly on Countess Morynska's chair. A smile even hovered about his lips, as, bending down to her, he asked–

"Do you think me such a bad fellow, then?"

"Yes, I do. Had not I the pleasure of seeing you in a regular passion the day before yesterday, at the time of the quarrel about the rudder?"

"But I was not in a passion with you." said Waldemar, reproachfully.

The Doctor let fall the hat he had hitherto grasped with both hands. What mild, gentle tones were those he had heard from his rough pupil's mouth, and what meant the look which accompanied it? The conversation went on as it had begun, Wanda teasing the young man in her usual merry, high-handed way, and Waldemar lending himself to the sport with infinite patience. Nothing seemed to irritate or offend him here. He had a smile for her every joke, and was, indeed, completely metamorphosed since he had come into the young Countess's presence.

"Dr. Fabian is listening to us quite devoutly," she laughed. "It rejoices you to see us in such good spirits, Doctor?"

Poor Doctor! He was not thinking of rejoicing. Everything was going round him in a whirl. Slight as was his experience of love matters, the truth began gradually to dawn upon him. He could now form some idea of how 'the land lay.' This, then, was the reason Waldemar had so amiably consented to the reconciliation; this was why he so assiduously rode over to C– in storm and sunshine; here was the explanation of the change in his whole behaviour. Herr Witold would certainly have a fit when he heard of it–Herr Witold, who had such a deeply rooted aversion to the entire 'Polish lot!' The diplomatic mission was indeed crowned with success in the very first half-hour; but its result filled the ambassador with such alarm that he entirely forgot the dissimulation which had been enjoined on him, and would probably have betrayed his trepidation, had not the Princess just then come in.

The lady had more than one reason for wishing to make the personal acquaintance of her son's tutor, who would accompany his pupil to the University. Now that the reconciliation had been achieved, that a lasting connection seemed likely to follow, Waldemar's nearest surroundings could not be a matter of indifference to her. She convinced herself, before ten minutes were over, that there was nothing to fear from the harmless Fabian; that, on the contrary, he might be made useful, possibly unknown to himself. Many things might be learned from the constant companion which could not be extracted from the taciturn Waldemar, and this was no unimportant consideration. The Princess did the Doctor the honour to look upon him as a fitting instrument for her use. She therefore treated him with much condescending kindness, and the humility with which he received such condescension met with her full approbation. She forgave him his shyness and awkwardness, or rather she looked on both as very natural in her presence, and deigned to engage him in conversation at some length.

On his mother's entrance, Waldemar had relapsed into his usual laconic mood. He took little part in the general talk, but after a time he said a few words to the Princess in a low voice. She rose at once, and went out with him on to the balcony.

"You wish to speak to me alone?" she asked.

"Only for a minute," replied Waldemar. "I only wanted to tell you that it will not be possible for me to accompany you and Leo to Wilicza, as we had agreed."

"Why? Are difficulties placed in your way?"

"Yes," said the young man, impatiently. "There are, it appears, certain formalities to be gone through, relating to my coming of age, at which I am bound to be present. My father's will gives most decided directions on the subject. Neither my uncle Witold nor I ever thought about it; and now, just when I want to go, the notice has come. I shall have to stay here for the present."

"Well, in that case, we will put off our journey also," said the Princess, "and I must send Wanda to Rakowicz alone."

"On no account," returned Waldemar, with much decision. "I have already written to Wilicza to say that you will arrive in the course of a few days, and that the necessary preparations are to be made at the castle."

"And you?"

"I shall come as soon as I am at liberty. Anyway, I shall spend a few weeks with you before I go to the University."

"One more question, Waldemar," said the Princess, gravely. "Does your ex-guardian know of these arrangements?"

"No, I have only spoken of my visit to Wilicza, so far."

"Then you will have to tell him of our intended sojourn there."

"I mean to," replied Waldemar, shortly. "I have written to my agent that he is to place himself at your service until I arrive. You have only to give your orders. I have provided for their being obeyed."

The Princess would have expressed her thanks, but she could not bring herself to articulate them. She knew so well that this generous consideration was not shown her for her own sake, and the particularly cold manner in which the obligation was conferred made it incumbent on her to accept it with equal reserve, if she would not incur a humiliation.

"So we may certainly expect you," she said. "As for Leo …"

"Leo is sulky still, because of our quarrel the day before yesterday," interrupted Waldemar. "When I arrived just now, he turned off very demonstratively towards the shore, pretending not to see me."

The Princess knitted her brows. Leo had received strict orders to meet his brother in a friendly manner, and now he was showing this rebellious spirit at a most inopportune moment.

"Leo is often hasty and thoughtless. I will see that he makes the first advances towards a reconciliation."

Waldemar declined coolly. "No, no, we shall settle it better between ourselves. You need not be uneasy."

They went back into the drawing-room, where Wanda meanwhile had been amusing herself by sending Dr. Fabian from one stage of embarrassment to another. The Princess now released him. She wished thoroughly to discuss the plan of her son's studies, and he was obliged to follow her into her private room.

"Poor Doctor!" said Wanda, looking after him. "It seems to me you have quite reversed your rôles. You have not a particle of respect for your teacher, but he stands in unbounded awe of you."

Waldemar did not contradict this assertion, which was but too just; he merely remarked–

"Does it appear to you that Dr. Fabian is a person to inspire respect?"

"Not exactly; but he seems very forbearing and good-natured."

The young man looked contemptuous.

"Perhaps so; but those are qualities I do not particularly value."

"One should tyrannise well over you if one wishes to inspire respect?" said Wanda, with an arch glance up at him.

Waldemar drew forward a chair, and sat down by her side. "It all depends upon who plays the tyrant. I would not advise any one at Altenhof to try it, not even Uncle Witold, and here I only stand it from one person."

"Who knows!" cried Wanda, lightly. "I should not care to make you angry in real earnest."

He made no reply. His thoughts had evidently wandered from the conversation, and were following another track.

"Did not you think it was very beautiful on the Beech Holm the day before yesterday?" he asked suddenly, with a brusque transition.

A slight blush rose to the young Countess's cheeks, but she answered in her former sprightly tone–

"I think there is something uncanny about the place in spite of its beauty; and, as to those sea legends of yours, I certainly shall not listen to them again at the sunset hour. One really comes to believe in the old fables."

"Yes, one comes to believe in them!" said Waldemar, in a low tone. "You reproached me with not entering into the poetry of the tradition. I have learned to understand it now in my turn."

Wanda was silent. She was struggling to keep down a certain embarrassment which had assailed her yesterday for the first time in her life. Before this, on young Nordeck's entrance, the feeling had taken possession of her. She had tried to laugh it off, to jest it away, and had succeeded in the presence of others; but directly the two were left alone together, it returned in full force. She could not get back the tranquil easy tone of former days. That strange evening on the Beech Holm! It had invested with a singular earnest a matter which was, and certainly was to remain, nothing but a joke.

Waldemar waited for an answer in vain. He seemed rather hurt that none came.

"I was telling my mother just now that I cannot go with you all to Wilicza," he began again. "I shall not be there for three or four weeks."

"Well, that is not long," said Wanda.

"Not long? Why, it is an eternity!" he cried, vehemently. "You can form no idea of what it costs me to stay behind, and let you set out alone."

"Waldemar, pray …" Wanda interposed in visible distress. He did not heed her, but went on with the same vehemence.

"I promised to wait until we were at Wilicza, but at that time I hoped to travel with you. Now it may be a whole month before we see each other again, and I cannot be silent so long. I cannot know you constantly in Leo's company, unless I have the conviction that you belong to me, to me alone."

The avowal came so suddenly, with such a rush, that the young Countess had no time to ward it off; and, indeed, any attempt of hers to stay this burst of passion would have been in vain. He had seized her hand again, and held it fast, as he had held it that evening on the Beech Holm.

"Do not shrink from me so, Wanda! You must long have known what brings me to this place. I have never been able to hide it, and you have borne with me–you have never repulsed me. I must break silence at last. I know I am not as others are. I know there is little, perhaps nothing, in me to please you; but I can, and will, learn to be different. It is solely and entirely on your account that I have imposed on myself these years at the University. What do I care for study, or for the life out yonder? I care for them nothing at all; but I have seen that I often shock you, that you sometimes laugh at me–and … and you shall not do it any more. Only give me the certainty that you are mine, that I shall not lose you. Wanda, I have been alone ever since I was a child–sadly alone, often. If I have seemed rough and wild to you–you know, dear, I have had no mother, no affection. I could not grow up to be like Leo, who has had both; but I can love, perhaps more ardently and better than he. You are the only creature I have ever loved, and one single word from you will make up to me for all the past. Say the word, Wanda–or give me, at least, hope that I may one day hear it from your lips; but, I entreat of you, do not say no, for I could not, could not bear it."

He was actually on his knees before her; but the young Countess had no thought now of enjoying the triumph she had once desired in her childish presumption and vanity. A dim suspicion had, now and again, crossed her mind that the play was growing more like earnest than she had intended, and that it would not be easy to end it by treating it as a mere joke; but, with the heedlessness of her sixteen years, she had put the thought from her. Now the crisis had come, and she must face it–must reply to this passionate wooer, who would be satisfied by nothing less than a 'yes' or a 'no.' Truly, the wooing was not an alluring one. There was none of that tender romantic halo about it which, to a young girl's imagination, appears all essential. Even through this avowal of his love there ran a touch of that sternness which was inseparable from Waldemar's character; but every word told of stormy, long pent-up emotion–spoke of passion's ardent glow. Now for the first time Wanda saw how earnest he was in this matter of his love; and, with a pang of burning self-reproach, the thought flashed through her mind–what had she done?

"Get up, Waldemar, pray–I entreat of you!" Her voice shook with repressed alarm and anxiety.

"When I hear you say yes, not before!"

"I cannot–not now–do get up!"

He did not obey her; he was still in the same supplicating attitude, when the door leading from the anteroom was unexpectedly opened, and Leo entered.

For one moment the new-comer stood rooted to the spot; then a cry of indignation escaped his lips. "So this is how it is!"

Waldemar had sprung to his feet. His eyes blazed with anger. "What do you want here?" he demanded of his brother, imperiously.

Leo had been pale from agitation, but the tone of this question sent the blood up to his face. With a few rapid strides he stood before Waldemar.

"You seem to think my presence here unnecessary," said he, with flashing eyes. "Yet I of all people can best unriddle to you the scene which has just taken place."

"Leo, do not speak!" cried Wanda, half entreating, half commanding; but, in his jealousy, the young Prince lost sight of every other consideration.

"I will speak," he returned, in his exasperation. "My word only bound me until the wager was won, and I have just seen with my own eyes in whose favour it is decided. How often I have begged of you to make an end of the sport. You knew it wounded me, that it drove me to desperation. You persisted in it, nevertheless. Am I to submit quietly while Waldemar, in his fancied triumph, shows me the door–I, who am witness of how you undertook to bring Waldemar to his knees, come what might? Well, you have succeeded; but at least he shall know the truth!"

At the first word 'wager,' a great shock had passed through Waldemar's frame; now he stood motionless, grasping the back of the chair convulsively, whilst his eyes were turned on the young Countess with a strange expression.

"What–what does this mean?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper.

Wanda drooped her head consciously. There was a struggle in her mind between anger against Leo and shame at her own conduct; while, sharper than either, prevailed a feeling of keen, intense anxiety. She knew now how cruelly the blow would tell! Leo, too, was silent–struck by the sudden change in his brother's countenance; he began also to feel how unjustifiably he had acted in exposing Wanda, and how needful it was for him to stop.

"What does this mean?" repeated Waldemar, suddenly rousing himself from his torpor, and going straight up to the young girl. "Leo speaks of some wager, of some sport of which I have been the object. Answer me, Wanda. I will believe you, and you only. Tell me that it is a lie!"

"So I am a liar in your eyes," broke out Leo; but his brother did not heed him. The young Countess's silence told him enough–he needed no further confirmation; but, with the discovery of the truth, all the savage fierceness of his nature rose up within him, and now that the charm to which he had so long yielded was broken, that fierceness carried him beyond all bounds.

"I will have an answer!" he broke out in a fury. "Have I really only been a plaything for you, an amusement for your caprices? Have you been laughing at me, making a mock of me, while I … You will give me an answer, Wanda–an answer on the spot, or I …"

He did not finish the sentence; but his look and tone were so menacing that Leo stepped before Wanda to protect her. She, too, now drew herself erect, however. The sight of the young man's ungovernable rage had given her back her self-possession.

"I will not allow myself to be questioned in this manner!" she began, and would have added words of proud defiance, when suddenly her eye met Waldemar's, and she stopped. Though his features still worked with passion, there was something in his look which told of the man's unspeakable mental torture at seeing his love scorned and betrayed, the ideal he had worshipped hopelessly and utterly destroyed. But her voice seemed to recall him to his senses. His clenched fists relaxed, and he pressed his lips tightly together, as though resolved that no further word should pass them. His breast heaved convulsively in the mighty effort he was making to restrain his rage. He staggered, and leaned against the chair for support.

"What ails you, Waldemar?" asked Leo in alarm, as, remorse springing up within him, he advanced towards his brother.

Waldemar raised himself, and, waving off Leo, turned to go without uttering a word, but with a face from which every drop of blood had receded.

At this moment the Princess made her appearance, accompanied by Dr. Fabian. The sound of their voices, growing louder and louder, had reached her in her room, and made it clear to her that something unusual was going on in the drawing-room. She came in quickly, and for an instant her entrance was unnoticed. Wanda stood vacillating between defiance and distress; but at this crisis the latter gained the upper hand, and, with the cry of a child confessing a fault and praying to be forgiven, she called to the young man to come back.

"Waldemar!"

He stopped. "Have you anything else to say to me, Countess Morynska?"

The young Countess started. Never before had that tone of frigid, cutting contempt met her ear, and the burning blush which mantled to her face showed how keenly she felt it. But now the Princess barred her son's passage.